The Guru got a girlfriend

A long time ago, in the 70s, when I was very young and very naïve, I decided that I
wanted to work in a vegetarianrestaurant for a time so that I could learn to cook well. There was one large restaurant in the city I lived in, run
by the devotees of a certain famous Indian teacher whom I shall leave nameless. So I
applied for and got a jobworking there. I started off making melon balls and washing a lot of dishes. But before long, I was doing most of the cooking (without any training) because this was an incredibly spaced-out and disorganized group of people.

I got along very well with all of them, even though I was an “outsider” and they would tell me about meditation, Bhakti Yoga and so forth. In the course
of things, I became curious about what it was that they did, so I started
going to the local centre to attend meditations. I found that of the 60 people who were members there, only two had managed to penetrate the circle of people surrounding the Guru and had actually been able to speak with him; the rest received instruction from them.

At the centre, people sat on cushions, did some chanting and
then meditated for an hour or so. There was an altar in the middle of the
room, a rather gaudylacquered box, which featured a photograph of the
esteemed teacher, a flower vase, and an incense bowl. It took me a
little while to get the hang of all of their little ceremonies, dressing in
a sari and the like, but I mastered the “flower offering” fairly quickly.
The flower offering was made before we began meditation and involved lining
up in single file, each of us holding a flower, placing it in the vase on
the altar and finishing up with a bow to the Guru.

After about six months of this, I arrived one day and took my place
in the line clutching my daisy. But when I reached the altar, I found that I
was looking at two pictures instead of one. So I turned to someone and
asked, “Who’s the woman?” to which she replied “Oh, that’s Durga” (that wasn’t
really her name, of course.) When I asked who “Durga” was, they told me
that they didn’t actually know who Durga was, but the teacher had sent this
photograph and told them to put it on the altar, so there she was.

The Guru lived
in New York at the time, so I decided to go see what was up. It was a 17
hour drive and I arrived just in time to attend a celebration the New York
group was holding. It was held in a huge Unitarianchurch. On a stage, they’d set up an enormous dais, decorated with painted paper machélotusblossoms on which the Guru sat. He talked for a bit (that’s another story) and then we all
meditated. I was both fascinated and horrified as I watched his eyes
alternately flickering back and forth and rolling back into his head. I didn’t know what
he was doing, but it didn’t seem like a good thing to me.

After the meditation, there was something akin to a cocktail party with
people all dressed in saris and funny trousers milling about telling each
other very poor jokes. I set about trying to get some information about the
mysterious “Durga” but I found everyone was tight lipped about her. Toward
the end of the evening, however, she put in a personal appearance. After she’d done the obligatory greetings and the crowd around her thinned, I walked
over and introduced myself. She said “Hello” and scanned me from head to
foot. Then she said, “I like your sari. I want it.” I replied, “Well, you
can’t have it.” She gave me an odd look, turned away and began speaking to
someone else.

I wasn’t able to find out anything substantial about her that night, but
the next day, I was granted permission to go to the Guru’s house. It was a
fairly small house and full of people, all milling, milling, waiting for the
Guru to show up. I walked down a hallway and noticed that there was a metal
security gatebarricading the staircase leading to the second floor.

There was
someone there who looked thoroughly bored, so I him asked why the staircase
was blocked off.
He said, “Oh, that’s so Guru and Durga can have some privacy.”
I said, “Ohh, I see. Could I ask you a really direct question?”
He said, “Sure.”
So I asked, “Who the hell is Durga and why is her photograph on our altar?”
He started to laugh and said, “Durga’s Guru’s girlfriend. She’s an
incarnation of somebody, I can’t remember who. But Guru’s got her
fucking photograph all over the place and she’s driving us fucking nuts.”